


The Fledgling

by cultivateourgarden



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dark, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 02:31:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cultivateourgarden/pseuds/cultivateourgarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mami reflects on the nature of magical girls, and on being alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fledgling

_No matter how frightened I am, or how hard it is, I can’t tell anyone about it. I always cry alone. Being a magical girl isn’t good at all._

Mami had accepted that there was a certain cycle to the world. Young birds leave the best, and cubs leave the den. And young magical girls, once they have learned what they need to know, leave their teachers.

She had been a magical girl for over two years now, and she was quite aware that few girls survived so long. Though a wish could be a great gift, the price was high, and witches were a deadly threat. As for herself, she could not regret it, since however many years she lived to fight witches were years she would not have had without Kyubey. However, it was a very lonely path to walk, and each time she took a new student, she wondered if perhaps this time, they might stay.

Sakura Kyouko had been one of the first, met when Mami saved her from a witch that was too powerful for a single inexperienced magical girl to defeat alone. And always brash, Kyouko had demanded Kyubey tell her how many magical girls survived their first year after their contract. His answer (37.64% over a five-year rolling average) was what had Mami thinking of it to begin with--that new magical girls needed a mentor, someone to guide them and fight with them as they learned to control their powers.

After Kyouko left, there had been others. Sometimes they parted ways after a fight, as it had been with Kyouko. Other times, they simply left one day, without any sign of having battled a witch. She simply learned to accept it after a while. Perhaps it was something in their powers that drove them apart, that forced them to find their own territories.

Her most recent had been Misaki, a girl in her last year of junior-high, a sweet girl with pigtails and a boundless appetite. She’d never mentioned her wish, and Mami didn’t ask; she felt it was unseemly to ask something so personal. Mami worried about her setting out on her own already. She wasn’t a very strong magical girl, though her ability to paralyze targets helped a great deal. But perhaps there was nothing to be done. Those that left never seemed to come back, but Mami hoped...

Perhaps being alone was simply the nature of a magical girl.

But now--now there was Madoka. Not yet a magical girl, though the potential around her was more power than some actual magical girls had. It was strange to see it around someone with no burning desire or ambition. And she loved Mami, and admired her, despite Mami’s many flaws and mistakes. And if she became a magical girl to fight at Mami’s side, perhaps--perhaps this once, she wouldn’t be alone any longer? Perhaps they would stay together?

_Will you truly fight with me from now on? Will you stay by my side?_

Her heart and blood sang as she fought the newborn witch, feeling the flare of her power under her skin, the fierce joy leaping from her gun as it hadn’t since she was a newly made magical girl herself. No longer alone. Perhaps this time--perhaps this time--

She could have hope.

A face leered above her, impossibly huge, and almost like an animated figure. For a moment, time stopped.

A ripple of power shivered along the skin of the creature’s neck. Familiar power.

_Misaki?_

Paralysis gripped her, frozen not only by fear but by a power she knew, she recognized, that she’d _trained_. No. No, surely not. _If magical girls are born of wishes, then witches could be said to be born of curses..._

She had only enough time to scream internally in horror at the realization of what she was, of what Madoka might become before everything went black.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really crazy about this piece, but I'm trying to write more, so posting here is a sort of encouragement for me to do it. Reviews would be greatly appreciated.


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